The Intravenous Fat Tolerance Test with Intralipid — Validity, Applications, and Limitations

Abstract

Determinations of plasma concentrations of serum lipids or lipoproteins will give an estimate of the pool size of these plasma constituents but will not give information about the amount secreted into the circulation per unit time or the amount eliminated from plasma per unit time. Such dynamic measurements have awakened increasing interest because they give considerably more information about the lipoprotein turnover and add to our knowledge of the pathophysiologic mechanisms causing hyperlipoproteinemia. Various methods have, therefore, been developed to study these parameters. However, no ideal tracers for endogenous TG have been found as yet. Several methods using precursors and labeled substances have been developed, but such procedures have generally been laborious and criticized for being imprecise. Doubt has also been cast on the reliability of the outcome of these methods because of the underlying assumptions for each technique.